Nvidia RTX 3080 is apparently coming to the most powerful gaming laptops

Along with mobile versions of the RTX 3060 and RTX 3070

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A new leak suggests thatNvidiais preparing to launch mobile versions of itsRTX 3080,RTX 3070andRTX 3060graphics cards, with these new mobile GPUs powering high-end gaming laptops from the beginning of 2021.

The leak,discovered by Twitter user @momomo_us, was from Skikk, a gaming PC maker from the Netherlands, which in a webpage (that has since been removed) apparently listed several laptops running on Nvidia’s as yet unannounced mobile RTX 3000 series GPUs.

The laptops in question came with either an Nvidia RTX 3060 with 6GB of GDDR6 memory, an Nvidia RTX 3070 Max-Q with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, and an RTX 3080 Max-Q with 16GB of GDDR6.

New laptop GPUs

What’s interesting about this leak is that at the moment, Nvidia’s RTX 2000 series are the latest GPUs available in laptops, with theRTX 2080currently being the most powerful graphics card you can get in a laptop.

However, with Nvidia launching its RTX 3000 series of graphics cards for desktop PCs a few months ago, it was only a matter of time before mobile versions of these GPUs were announced for gaming laptops, withCES 2021(which happens at the beginning of January) being the most likely event where Nvidia will make an announcement.

So, this leak isn’t ahugesurprise, but, if accurate, does give us an idea of what kind of spec these new mobile GPUs will use.

First, it appears that these mobile GPUs will use GDDR6 memory, not GDDR6X memory found in the desktop variants. This, along with different memory buses for the GPUs, suggests that these will be cut-down versions of the RTX 3000 series using different chips to the desktop versions.

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Because of thermal and battery considerations in gaming laptops (which are thinner than desktop PCs), it makes sense that these mobile GPUs are lower powered to prevent them getting too hot, and depleting battery life too fast.

It seems like to offset this a bit, Nvidia is boosting the amount of memory on the mobile RTX 3080 to 16GB, compared to the 10GB of faster GDDR6X memory on the desktop version.

We should point out that this leak is far from confirmed, and the original page has been taken down. Still, we do expect to see RTX 3000-powered gaming laptops at some point in 2021, and these will hopefully offer a big leap in performance for thebest gaming laptopson the planet.

ViaTom’s Hardware

Matt is TechRadar’s Managing Editor for Core Tech, looking after computing and mobile technology. Having written for a number of publications such as PC Plus, PC Format, T3 and Linux Format, there’s no aspect of technology that Matt isn’t passionate about, especially computing and PC gaming. He’s personally reviewed and used most of the laptops in our best laptops guide - and since joining TechRadar in 2014, he’s reviewed over 250 laptops and computing accessories personally.

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